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"When you're not pregnant people don't give a flying toss about you": a multi-site exploration of moral exclusion and mothers in Ireland
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Date
2019
Authors
Robinson, Sarah
Journal Title
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Publisher
University College Cork
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Abstract
This thesis contributes to understandings about contemporary processes of moral exclusion of women in Ireland, particularly two groups of mothers positioned as failing to live up to the socio-cultural and historical "ideal" of motherhood and are at risk of (or have been) separated from their child due to child protection or moral concerns. These two groups are: women contemporarily engaged in child protection, and women separated from their children in Mother and Baby Homes, historic institutions designed to conceal unmarried motherhood. The first study explores women's experiences of a contemporary child protection intervention, a residential therapeutic assessment of parenting capacity. The assessment makes recommendations as to whether a child will remain in the custody of her mother. Little is known about women's experience of this process, despite it representing a key developmental transition in their lives. This study asked: What are the characteristics of women that participate in this residential therapeutic intervention? What are women's experiences of residential therapeutic intervention, and what supports or hinders their transition back to the community afterwards? Results of the socio-demographic analysis found 29% of mothers engaged in intervention from January 2010 until March 2016 had grown up in foster care; 60% had previous children; 50% had a history of substance misuse; just over 20% had mental health conditions and 60% had co-existing adversities. Semistructured interviews were conducted with four mothers and five staff and a focus group was held with 5 related practitioners/researchers. The combined data set was analysed using thematic analysis. Two overarching themes of Experiences of the unit and Experiences of transition from the unit emerged. The first overarching theme included a sub-theme of Experiences of Care and Control, and a sub-theme of Legacies of and fear of loss. A second theme of Tensions between therapy and assessment had the following sub-themes: Paradox of Therapy and Assessment; Ambiguity of the Unit and Decrease in therapy, increase in assessment. Experiences of transition from the unit included four themes of Invisibility of mothers without care of their child; Lack of structural & relational supports; Importance of motherhood identity and Phase transition & continuity of care. Implications for policy, practice and theory are discussed.
The second study of this thesis is divided in two parts and explores the public meaning-making about the women's experiences of Mother and Baby Homes. While this topic was taboo for decades, in 2014, international and national news media highlighted an unmarked mass grave of children at a former Mother and Baby Home in a disused septic tank. This created a public outcry about the dishonouring of the dead, and lead to a Commission of Investigation into the treatment of women and children in Mother and Baby Homes. What was once taboo, began to be publicly discussed. In order to examine the public-meaning-making, 197 Letters to the Editors of the three main newspapers, the Irish Times, the Irish Independent and the Irish Examiner were examined in order to explore the different discourses and repertoires used to make-meaning about the Mother and Baby Home past; to decipher what positions are offered, and how the moral community is (re)configured or not through them? Discourse Analysis was applied to the data. Findings are: The primary ways in which the Mother and Baby Home past is discussed is an acknowledge-the past-as-bad, but-distance-from-it strategy that draws on repertoires of pragmatic realism; historical relativism/context of the time and rhetorical strategies of condemnation of condemners and emotion-reason binary. A counter discursive strategy of acknowledging the past as bad and advocating for accountability is evident. This is achieved through rhetorical strategies of extreme case analogies with a discourse of global human rights. The primary subject of concern and the manner in which the past is relegated as "bad" is mediated through a dishonouring of the dead repertoire, with moral exclusion remaining in these letters, for the living - both women and their children, and dead children of Protestant Homes.
Part two of the analysis of this study explores how these dominant discursive strategies are used within a discourse of blame, in which repertoires of collective responsibility, church (and sometimes state) culpability, familial responsibility is used in conjunction with engaged followership; enmeshed Church and State; Psychological control of the Church; Obedience to Authority of the Church and Togetherness repertoires to position social actors as responsible for the past or not. In this negotiation of who is responsible, there is often a negotiation of what this means for Irish collective identity and the historic charter. This negotiation also has implications for Church-State relations as well as women and children with experiences of the Mother and Baby Home past. Contributions of this thesis include making visible both groups of women and rendering visible the socially legitimate ways of moral exclusion of both. In understanding the everyday ways that moral exclusion occurs; strategies to counter-act moral exclusion can be found. Theoretical, policy and programmatic implications are discussed.
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Keywords
Exclusion of women in Ireland , Mother and Baby Homes , Unmarked mass grave of children
Citation
Robinson, S. 2019. "When you're not pregnant people don't give a flying toss about you": a multi-site exploration of moral exclusion and mothers in Ireland. PhD Thesis, University College Cork.